Blog post continued

So, to continue from yesterday. The dudes who run the hostel are three Italian brothers, and their family also owns a restaurant and a hotel. Last night they piled 8 of us into a tiny tiny van and recklessly (yet skillfully) drove us up to the restaurant. It was seriously like the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland--sometimes you are going 40 miles an hour toward a wrought-iron gate, only to swerve into a 5-foot-wide alley at the last minute, where you will narrowly miss an elderly man, who canes out of the way into a doorway. Anyways, the restaurant was amazing, and Napolitan pizza needs its own blog post. They fire these things in 900 deg F wood-burning ovens, and the only thing on the dough is bufala mozzerella, tomatoes, and a few sprigs of basil; it is mouth orgasm. At midnight we took a bus down to some natural hot springs, which are heated by the island's volcanic activity. Some of the pools are scalding, while others are quite cold. It's a complicated ritual to swirl some hot and cold water around you in order to get the right temperature. The experience was heightened by 6 bottles of homemade wine. Today we just hit the beach and got some sun. We met a couple girls from Norway who are pretty chill, a girl from Alberta, and a couple dudes from E Washington, and we've been hanging out with them. We will probably extend our stay here a bit, as we hear Rome is kind of ridiculous. Tomorrow we'll hike up the volcano, it's going to be awesome. More posts to follow on the past couple weeks.
-SB

In which the boys sit on pebble beaches in Croatia, almost kill themselves on a 24-hour train ride, and end up in Italian paradise

Hi all,
So, it appears our frequency of blog posts is decreasing exponentially over time (however, this does mean the period is increasing! Nawrf!) Last we spoke I believe we were in Prague. Holy shit, it's been over two weeks. A brief summary now, as we are about to head out to dinner at the restaurant owned by the family that runs our hostel in Ischia, Italy. From Prague we proceeded to Budapest, which is an awesome city. We spent thousands of forints (220 forints/1 dollar). At one point a young Irish lad took off his shoes, hoping this would convince us to accompany him and his friend to the bar ("it's me birthday! Cmon Americans!"). His friend, vomiting every 20 meters, approached and the lad commanded his friend to remove his footwear, "so the Americans will come to the bar with us!" This was followed by attempts to shit on the windshield of a few cars parked on the curb. Unfortunately, the Irish gentlemen told us the wrong bar, and we were unable to locate the mirthful gaggle. Shit, I have to go, but more stories of Croatia and Italy to follow. Ciao!
-SB

Urkl's a frren bur but a Murkin word

So, hi. How's it going; it's been about 10 days of radio silence (or at least intertubes silence) so we reckon we should put up a brief summary of what us Merkins been up to. Today is our third day in Prague, and we are staying in the old town section, which is a huge tourist trap. One third of the population of this area is beautiful women sporting designer clothes and large sunglasses. Between this and the generally douchey tourists spending their time on pubcrawls, it almost feels like home. Except for the fact that Prague is a fucking BEAUTIFUL city; every corner you turn there's a quaint little street with cafes set in old, old medieval buildings, and there are old churches everywhere. The other highlight has been the Czech countryside and a trip to the Pilsner Urquell brewery, which was awesome. Enclosed is a pic of us enjoying some unfiltered, unpasteurized Urkl (as we Merkins call it).

As for the rest of the past 10 days, I believe our last post was from Hamburg. Matgos will follow with Hamburg stories. We have also spent 5 days in Berlin, where we saw the East Side Gallery, Sachensenhausen concentration camp, the Jewish museum (which had an awesome comic book exhibition), the Tiergarten, and various memorials. Berlin was a bit of a bleak city, especially since our hostel was on the east side of the city (all square Soviet architecture). More to come on Berlin as well.

Today we are sitting in a rip-off of a tourist-centered bagel place, and we're taking it a bit easy. The US-England match is tonight, which we will watch in the town square on a huge television; it will be glorious. More pictures and stories to come!
-SB

Your foot bone's connected to your...

Body bone? It's crazy how quickly one small malalignment will grind your body to a bloody pulp. See exhibit A above (I think...I'm blogging via email so it's hard to say where things will show up). Anyways, I hurt my ass-legs (so named because they are useless, all they do is hold up my ass) running around Hamburg with a gigantic backpack on. The result was a whacked knee that led to a pulled hamstring and a gnarly blister. And both on opposing legs! I swear I would not have survived if I were born in the dark ages, my body is a Trabi. I give my thanks to modern technology.
Buuuut there are better things to discuss than my benjamin button body, like the trip from Amsterdam to Hamburg (and Hamburg I will leave for another post [by the way, sorry for using so many parentheses {but isn't this super meta!}]). :)
So we left Amsterdam in a rush. The night before had been reserved for a sinful evening in the redlight district and we woke up hung over and 20 minutes to checkout. After that, we figured we would catch a regional train out to groningen, in the northwest portion of the country, because it was partially on the way to hamburg and home to a 50,000 student university. Unfortunately, poorly demarcated routes led us to leeuwarden in Frisland and 60 miles in the opposite direction. So we traveled back to groningen and immediately out to Leer, a small city in northwestern germany and the end of the line for trains traveling out of the Netherlands.
In Leer, we had a two and a half hour layover before we could catch a train out to Hamburg. So we did what any german would do...we got some pastries and beer and chilled out near the tracks. Eventually we wandered into town and found a remarkably Nebraskan, vaguely 70s era, pearl street-esque, bizarroland town. Because I'm me, I forgot to take any photos besides two of a non-american store called New-York (for a similar phenomenon cf. Old Chicago) that sold the most utterly european clothing. Here are the exhibits B and C. In the. First, note the designer capri shorts and neon fannypack of the mannequin, and of lesser significance, note the weird tourists in the periphery. Second, take a gander at the t-shirt image. It's a soccer shirt, with a half-nekkid anime character, before what I surmise to be an African flag. New-York indeed!
Anyhow, we made it out of Leer to Hamburg, stopping once to transfer and grab some schokolade and trinken. Long story short, we got off at the wrong Hamburg exit, ran to catch a train that we were shewed away from (whence the knee problems), creeped onto a second train, scotch had a spider on his face, made it to the hostel, had a drink with the locals, and fell sound asleep.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Dick punch (or as the Germans say, 'dick punch')

Papa goss makes his inaugural and belated blog post! This was a sign from the rotlicht area of Frankfurt just outside of the five elements hostel. On the one hand, it was fortunate that this was one of many signs we saw that just makes one want say 'amyerika' in a rough russian accent meant to imitate the throaty german affectation (which, being so american, in turn makes one want to say 'silly self, now I have to bite your tongue out)--on the other hand,it is unfortunate that this is the only picture that we took of such german awesome. For now, enjoy, and soon, more posts!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Koln (Cologne)

So, we've been in amsterdam for a couple of days now, but I'm gonna throw up some photos from Cologne. First things First: Kolsch!

As many people know, this is my favorite beer style, and it originates from Cologne (Koln in german). This is Gaffel Kolsch, one of the biggest and best from the region.  It was light, and had a head for days, and was totally delicious.

This is the Cologne cathedral. It was built in the 1200s, and houses the relics of the 3 magi. It was amazingly huge. That is all.

Welp, i gotta run, so i can't post more, but i'll try to update when we get to Hamburg.

Amsterdam update

So, after staying a night in Frankfurt, we decided to head up north to Amsterdam. We took an hour and a half train to Köln, where we saw the biggest cathedral I've ever seen. The train station has a glass roof, and you can see this behemoth of intricate towers, parapets, and gargoyles rising up hundreds of feet (or, a couple less hundreds of meters) above. We enjoyed traditional Kölsch beer, and I bought this 6 Euro watch which stops working about every half hour. And holy shit, the shwarma is AMAZING. From Köln we took another train to Amsterdam, where we are staying in a huge hostel about 15min from the red light district (stories to follow). We almost got caught in a dance contest being filmed for a Dutch television show. Apparently the show also involved a shirtless dude riding around with hipster glasses and mustache courtesy of face sharpie. Yeah, I don't know; definitely a Vice Don't. The caption pretty much writes itself: "You really aren't doing Amsterdam right if you can draw legibly on your face". It's raining like crazy though, and apparently it won't let up until Wednesday. Currently we are sitting in an awesome coffee shop called Bagels and Beans enjoying some bangin coffee. The Netherlands is like a bizarro version of the US. The funny thing about Dutch is that you can pretty much understand it if you pronounce it. For example, our bus passes were "chipkaarts"; from an advertisement board: "zeker abot seks!"; and the convenience store is a "nachtkoop". Lots of people ride bikes, all of them cruiser commuter types, and they are ridden no matter the weather; an umbrella is all you need! Well, back to drying off; photographs and journal pages to follow!